Microsoft Azure Object Storage Reviews

I worked in Azure Cloud mostly on the Databricks side, with SQL Server or Synapse Analytics, or streaming analytics. It's a blob storage solution. We use the storage account, either the blob storage or the ADLS Gen 2.

We can do data queries easily. If it's a JSON document or XML document, mostly we deliver the APIs, calls, and all. The document is stored as an object stored in the Blob Storage. Then, using the Databricks, we try to process that JSON and then load it into a Delta Lake table. That is where we interact mostly with Object Storage.

The initial setup is straightforward. 

If we look at the different versions of that ADLS, it really does not have a hierarchical storage mechanism. If you want to store any document, you have to go and create one blob storage account, in case you want to store any hierarchical data. 

The solution is stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

It's all scalable. It has lifecycle management where I can define a rule so that I can easily archive or move the data from the cool tier to the hot tier based on the uses and then I can also send it into the cool tier so that it can be frequently accessed. If I do that, the cost can also be minimized.

Technical support is great. We have a partnership basically with Microsoft. For my organization, Microsoft is the partner vendor. Whenever it is required, support is readily available to us.

Positive

I'm also familiar with Amazon S3. 

The initial setup is straightforward. You just have to create a storage account. You can automate that also. You have different mechanisms. You can use Azure templates, like SQL, or you can use the Terraform as well. To automate the creation of that object storage or any account. Or, if you have different APIs, like Python-based API, you can easily create what you need.

If we compare most of the other cloud vendor solutions, for example, S3 Object, S3 with the Blob Storage, more or less, both have the same capabilities. However, from a security perspective, Azure is very good. Azure offers AD integration with the storage account. That is something I find as a good feature compared to the other clouds and integration with all the Azure services is a really useful feature.

We're a gold partner with Microsoft.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten due to the ADLS integration and the different authentication mechanisms that we have.

We need to make sure that the data which we are storing in those storage objects is highly secured. That is where Azure is providing us with the best features. We can go with the different mechanisms like its Nexus security or the AD authentication. Or, they also provide us admin encryption, including the transparent keys. With transparent encryption, we can encrypt based on customer-based keys. Those are also some good features that make it a really great product.

I think it is not an improvement from the tool, but we were able to arrange our layers on the data lake using objects and a best practice for speeding them up or for making partitions in objects to protect against security vulnerabilities and increase the performance of data access. I don't think there are improvements in our company from the use of the tool. It is just the best practice that we are using in our company.

Microsoft Azure Object Storage makes some valuable compliance certifications for healthcare, and we need to obey the compliance part. In the healthcare sector, we have HIPAA, and in Brazil, we have LDPD compliance, which is similar to GDPR compliance. When we have to make proof of data access, proof of deletion, or datasheet reading, we can do it all easily with Azure.

Microsoft Azure Object Storage is like other cloud providers. It is just a simple object storage and the first kind of cloud product in the market. Amazon started off with S3, but our company didn't see any advantages against other competitors with the product specifically.

I believe AI will be available in the tool, but we don't know whether such a feature exists. We didn't use AI in our case to see if our team and our customers would see the difference during deployment.

The tool doesn't offer Microsoft Copilot and Microsoft AI. It would be great to see Microsoft Copilot and Microsoft AI in Microsoft Azure Object Storage. When you speak about Microsoft Azure Object Storage is a new kind of database. You have the better parts from two worlds, which are the vector and index features, and you can use them for your products without any migration or any other condition. It will be good to be tested.

I have been using Microsoft Azure Object Storage for three years. My company develops solutions, so I am a Microsoft customer.

The scalability of the tool has no limits.

Considering that we have many direct and indirect users, I would say there are 100 users.

In the future, we want to multiply the number of users of the tool by ten times.

For my team, the first level of support from the tool could be better. For the technical account, the tool's consultants are very good as they bring in some of the best practices into our company, and so we have the solution's validated design. I think the type of support depends on the customer, but for our use case, we try to follow all the product's recommendations. I rate the technical support a six to seven out of ten.

Neutral

I use Azure Service Fabric, some storage pools, and all things related to Microsoft.

The product's initial setup phase is similar to the processes required to follow for other tools in the market. I think Azure's initial setup phase is harder than Amazon or GCP.

The product's installation phase has some limitations. I have to set up more parameters on Azure than other tools. I had some issues with the tool's setup phase.

Most of the time, when we deploy the tool on a complete rack and stack, we write every line in Terraform. I think every time you need to deploy the tool, the first time, you have to keep it totally focused, so it is a manual process.

The solution is deployed using a public cloud. We may change our model to a multi-cloud one, but it is not like a hybrid model.

I think the ROI depends on the product. When it comes to Microsoft Azure Object Storage, it doesn't deliver entire value to our customers. The product made is totally fit, but for the market, I think we are not able to get hold of the market fit.

The price will be more competitive when we increase the time spent using the tool. For our company's size range, I think the price is okay.

The tool's maintenance is not complex. We have deployed an observability platform on Microsoft Azure Object Storage, and all the parameters in our dashboards are not complex.

I rate the tool an eight out of ten.

The storage account is one of the primary components in all implementations, including cloud implementations. It is a common resource in Azure.

We mostly work with Blob Storage, and it is a very good resource for unstructured storage. Blob Storage is one of the best resources in Azure for storing unstructured data such as files, video files, audio files, and Excel files. Currently, Blob Storage is the cheapest and best solution, with very good features for unstructured data.

One of the things that are currently important is consistency. To achieve this, another database called Cosmos DB is available. We want to have a similar consistency to the one in Cosmos DB but at a cheaper price. Although Cosmos DB is known to be expensive, it has a guaranteed consistency level of 99.99%. I want Microsoft to explore how they can provide the same consistency level as Cosmos DB but at a lower cost. Speaking of consistency, we are currently using GRS or GZRS as our storage redundancy types. It would be great if we could achieve the same guaranteed consistency level as with Cosmos DB. It would be of great use if we could apply the same approach to our storage account.

Currently, I do not have any suggestions regarding Blob Storage. The storage account allows for storing VHD, which is a type of blob, along with other blob types, such as append blobs and page blobs. These blob types are already well-matured designs, and I don't have any suggestions. The storage account also offers different tiers, such as cool, hot, and archive tiers, as per the access. These features meet the needs of data and application engineers for storing data. Mostly, it has all the features to meet the current requirements, and it is one of the well-designed resources from Microsoft.

I work with an Azure storage account that includes a blob bin and file storage. I have used Azure Blob Storage for almost five years. Also, I am not sure if we are partners with Microsoft since I joined a month ago.

For stability, I rate it a nine out of ten. This is because it offers one of the best features. Also, I have not faced any complaints regarding the storage account in my five years of experience. There might be other resources I feel that I couldn't access or have some service-related issues. But, I didn't face any issues with the storage account.

I rate the solution nine out of ten in terms of its ability to scale. Since it is a management service, we should not bother about scaling. This is because we have a very good scaling policy for management services. As I recently joined the organization, I am not aware of how many employees are currently using this solution.

The technical support you receive depends on the plan you choose, whether it is the basic plan, standard plan, or premium plan. In my current organization, we have a premium plan for which the technical support is awesome. I raised three tickets with the technical support team while using the premium plan and received the best support from Microsoft. So, I rate the technical support a ten out of ten.

Positive

I am working with AWS, Azure, and GCP, but my major contribution to the cloud is towards Azure.

It is a very simple process.

Currently, it is a flexible price policy.

Amazon S3 is equivalent to Azure Storage accounts, as they offer almost the same features. Based on my experience, I find Azure to be a more comfortable tool to work with compared to Amazon S3. The UI is better designed, and I could easily understand the features and other things. Therefore, even though the two solutions are similar, I rate the storage account solution higher than Amazon S3.

It is one of the best features or resources, especially for people who want to use Blob Storage for unstructured data. For us, it is a very cost-effective resource since we can understand it easily. I haven't experienced any issues with this solution for the past five to six years. I rate this solution a nine out of ten.

Microsoft Azure Object Storage offers hassle-free usage. It is easy to configure. 

The product is expensive.

I have been working with the solution for a year. 

I rate the solution's stability a nine out of ten. 

I rate the tool's scalability a nine out of ten. My company has more than 100 users who use it 24/7.  

Microsoft support's turnaround time is high, and its documentation is good. Sometimes, the person who is assigned a ticket is not an expert. 

Neutral

I rate the product's setup a nine out of ten. The deployment team had around 20 members. 

Encryption feature is an add-on. 

I rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

We use this solution to store images and Excel files.

We used to use an on premise file system and the maintenance of on a premise server is difficult. This is why we migrated to Azure storage. Using this solution has reduced our maintenance time and cost. 

The file retention and object retention have been most valuable.

Uploading files from the UI has presented some issues. When editing work and once you delete a file, it takes some time to recreate the same file. If I have an ABC file and if I delete it and I want to recreate the file again with the same name, it is not immediate. There is at a least 30 seconds or one-minute delay.

We have been using this solution for three years.

This is a stable solution. 

This is a scalable solution. We have specifically configured it for scalability. 

We have reached out for technical support but not directly related to Azure Storage. We had a Logic app and we tried to connect it to Azure Storage. They provided a solution but it was not a limitation of Azure Storage and rather a limitation of the Logic app.

I would rate the support for this solution a nine out of ten. 

Positive

The initial setup is straightforward. We had no issues with the deployment because we used GitHub Action, Azure DevOps, terraforms as well as AMS scripts to build and deploy. Deployment did not take more than a minute.

We have used a pricing calculator to find out the general pricing for our clients. 

I would recommend this solution to those who already have an on-premise file system and who want to migrate to a cloud-native solution. This solution offers scalability at a lower cost and additional benefits compared with an on-premise file server.

Perhaps some customers wish to share information such as DPN or other materials about the company. However, we are uncertain about reaching every worldwide employee in every country or office. Therefore, this solution allows to download or access information like product details or new prices.

The reason is that I believe they only offer the corporate interface we use, and perhaps they should consider creating a historical customer interface. I haven't created a virtual machine; instead, I've established a personal GED. This allows me to provide customers with the necessary role functions, enabling them to download files without incurring excessive costs.         

The efficiency depends on various operations, and therefore, it should involve multiple vendor support.

I have been using Microsoft Azure Object Storage for three to five years.

The stability is good.

It is scalable and we have around ten users.

We have used Microsoft's technical support through phone calls; the experience was okay.

Positive

Regarding the integration and setup of Public Storage, it was a bit complex. The upgrade process was okay. In terms of time, I'm not sure about the exact duration of the deployment. We use object storage for data related to different customers. I'm still learning about the steps involved in deployment.

We didn't use a consultant; it's done in-house. The technical staff needed for deployment and maintenance is more than ten. 

I'm not aware of the licensing cost, as my customer handles it. In Taiwan, it's reasonably priced,

I would recommend this solution, and my advice is to use it for object storage or other services. I would like to see improvements in integration to support multiple operations.

We use the product for storage, documentation, and reporting. 

Microsoft Azure Object Storage needs to improve stability and cloud user interface. 

I rate the tool's stability an eight out of ten. 

Microsoft Azure Object Storage is scalable, and we have nine users. 

A consultant helped us with the implementation. 

The tool's licensing costs are annual. It should be made reasonable. 

I rate the solution a nine out of ten. 

We use the solution on multiple levels. We deploy at the product level, production, and internal use cases.

The most valuable features of the solution are its performance and stability.

Since the solution is messy and heavy, it needs to be faster in terms of speed and latency.

I have been using Microsoft Azure Object Storage for five years.

I rate the solution’s stability a nine out of ten.

Microsoft Azure Object Storage is a scalable solution. Around 60 people use the solution extensively in our organization.

The solution provides good technical support.

The solution’s initial setup is a little complex. Around 15 technical staff are required for the solution's deployment and maintenance.

Microsoft Azure Object Storage is a stable product with good enough uptime.

Microsoft Azure Object Storage is an expensive solution. We need to pay a monthly licensing fee for the solution. We need to pay extra setup cost in addition to the standard licensing fees.

We use the enterprise version of the solution. I would recommend the solution to people who have a Microsoft ecosystem.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.